Motion graphics for churches

If you’re filmmaker, tech director, or even a video production volunteer, you likely notice the images behind the lyrics and sermon notes on the projection screens as much as the text itself. Motion graphics are a great way to draw and keep attention on text-based slides. So, if you're not using motion graphics for backgrounds, or if you'd like to take your motion graphics to the next level, here's how you can get started today.

Editor's Note: Want to learn more? Join us at the Content Creation and Filmmaking Summit August 1, 2017 in Raleigh N.C. Woody Davis will be leading the break out session "Action and Animation: Combining Motion Graphics with Live Video Footage." Learn more and register here.

First, you'll need access to visual effects software. We'll start with Adobe After Effects (AE), though many of the techniques here will transfer to other programs. If you’re not familiar with AE, it’s an effects editor that offers a vast number of advanced production techniques without requiring a highly skilled operator. It comes included with a standard Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a church video or filmmaking department without at least one copy. AE is perfect for creating motion backgrounds as it has a massively powerful command over two-dimensional stills and video footage. Combine that with a mix of 3D capabilities, animating tools and brilliant third-party plug-ins and there’s plenty to keep even the veteran motion designer busy.

This tutorial is designed with a couple things in mind. I’d like to explain how to make a respectable motion background using a couple of really nifty tricks while spending exactly zero dollars, (so long as you already have the software program.) If you’re green to After Effects, the video at the end of this paragraph should be helpful, but if you’re completely brand new, it might be worth giving adobe’s AE help page a once-over first.

The following subjects are some of the most basic tools at work in After Effects, yet I’m still finding new ways to use them in my day to day work. I'd highly recommend trying to master these before trying to get into nuts and bolts of AE’s massive effect catalogue. If you can put these ideas into your utility belt, there is no end to the amount of shiny things you can create.

Comps and Pre-composing

To understand how to pre-compose, we must start with After Effect’s most basic idea: “comps." Any project in After Effects begins with a comp. It's short for “composition.” The comp is AE's version of a basic timeline, and all the things you create in an AE project will live inside at least one comp.

So that leave precomps. What are precomps? Precomps, or Precomposing occurs when the user selects layers in a composition, and places those layers within a new comp that sits inside the first original comp. Think of it like turning your attic into a rentable living space for profit. Both the house and the attic are living spaces, but the attic is a subset of the house. (This analogy breaks down quickly, because in AE, you can place any comp within another unique comp. Imagine if you could move your neighbor’s whole house inside your own.)

Blending Modes

If you’ve used any modern image editor, you may have noticed blending modes. Blending modes are just rules that the program follows when layering two different images against each other. Their use spreads throughout most major Adobe tools and a lot of other programs as well.

Blending modes include:

Normal

This is 98% of blending mode usage. Having the blend set to “normal” tells AE to handle the layer at full default opacity if it’s above other layers.

Screen

This prioritizes the opacity of brighter color values above darker ones. The brighter the image, the more opacity it will have. White pixels will be completely visible, and black pixels will not appear.

Multiply

The opposite of screen mode, this mode prioritizes darker colors over brighter colors. Black is visible and white is invisible.

Overlay

Similar to screen and multiply, overlay prioritizes both brights and darks for opacity, leaving middle gray values in the least visible section

DifferenceThis mode inverses image values against each other in the brights, creating unlikely colors in the process. Think of it like inverting an image in Photoshop, but by use of another image.

The results of layering with blending modes are wildly powerful. You should constantly practice new ways of using blending modes. There are thousands of ways to combine them and sometimes whole aesthetic ideas emerge from the unexpected results they can create.

Masking

When I think about After Effects, I tend to think about masking. This is probably because I have misused and overused this feature frequently in the past. Nonetheless, masking is highly useful and dynamic, and I continue to find better ways of using it every time I design.

The basics of masking are as follows

• Masks are applied to layers, and are primarily used for carving out sections of imagery.

• Masks can be drawn in any shape. Shapes are called the mask’s “Path"

• Mask Paths can be key-framed to animate over time.

• Masks can be tapered off by using the “mask feather” property or by drawing them on with the mask “Feather Tool.”

• Masks can affect the image’s opacity using “Mask Opacity"

• The “Mask Expansion” property is used to extend or contract the mask beyond its borders

3D Camera

This tool allows control of the composition in three-dimensional space. In addition, the 3D camera works wonders for creating parallax motion, allows you to explore virtual environments, and simulates lenses when creating effects. By default, placing a 3D camera into the timeline will cause the perspective of the comp to become tethered to the cameras view.

3D camera’s have a number of features that mimic real cameras such as sensor size, focal length, and depth of field. We use depth of field in the video tutorial as a means of blurring out the foreground and background layers.

Parenting/Orbit Null

Parenting is a funny word to use in an editing program. It simply consists of attaching layers (“children”) to other layers (“parents”) in terms of position scale and rotation. In the video tutorial, I pair our 3D camera to an orbit null. The camera becomes a “child layer” and it begins to move in tandem with the null. Moving the null will result in moving the camera. I do this for a couple reasons, the first being that nulls are a little easier to use for animation. The second reason is that parenting also preserves relative position, scale and rotation options for every child layer. If I decided I to move the camera’s position or rotation relative to the orbit null at a later time I could still do so without moving the orbit null at all.

What even is a null? In After Effects, a null is exactly what it sounds like: it’s simply an empty layer. Nulls do little other than serve as parents, or hold on to key-frame or effects data. For the most part they are just invisible layers.

Hopefully this tutorial gives you a feel for a couple of techniques to use in After Effects. There are an unlimited number of effects that can be achieved with even one of these techniques. Experiment with them often enough and you will have an endless assortment of backgrounds for your projector screens every very weekend.